The Art of Massage by David Lauterstein INSTRUCTIONS FOR THIS CE: The Art of Massage is a course meant to stimulate your imagination and inspire you and your massage/bodywork. We recommend not reading it straight through but rather reading just one or more sections each day and thinking about them. Let them resonate and affect your understanding and intuition. After you have done all the reading, to receive the certificate for completing the 3 hours of continuing education – do the exam, choosing the best answer for each question. There is also a required minimum 250-word essay, to help you integrate your own insights and excitements reflecting on what you have read, thought and felt. Both will be graded and require a score of 70% or more. Each essay will be individually graded and commented on by David Lauterstein. We hope that this process will enrich your work and life. 1 The Lauterstein-Conway Massage School and Clinic Table of Contents Acknowledgements 5 Preface 6 Accuracy 13 “Altared” States 15 A Poem About Massage 18 Believing in Touch 20 Body Questions 22 Breath 23 Destiny Made Visible 25 Diaphragms of Life 27 Don’t Lose the Music 30 Eternity 32 Evaluation as Act of Mercy 34 Facial Diaphragms 35 Galea Aponeurotica 37 God’s First Language 39 Growing New Arms 40 How the Radiologist Changed My Life 42 In Every Pause 43 Is Pain Your Friend? 45 I Saw the Angel 47 In Work We Know 49 Lifting off Your Head 50 Look at Me! 51 Loving Time 53 Massage at the Red Sea 54 Mind-Body Adhesion 56 2 The Lauterstein-Conway Massage School and Clinic Nine Ways Time Holds the Key 57 Ode to Piriformis 59 Ornaments and Crime 61 Proust was Wrong 63 Reflections on Fascia and Change 65 Re-making Faces 67 Rhythm’s Role 69 Silver Linings and Inner Treasures 71 Social Subluxation 73 Spirit Outlets in Bodywork and Life 74 10 Reasons to Love Gluteus Maximus The 76 Ala, Your Pelvic Wings 78 The Antidote to Pain 79 The Art of Meeting 80 The Calling 82 The Joy of Standing 83 The Lucky 7 on the Bottom of Your Foot 85 The Massage Client Who Didn’t Like Touch 87 The Need to Touch 88 The Silent Mind in Massage 89 The Two Mothers of Deep Massage 90 The Wild Client 92 The World Beyond Understanding 94 Touching with Human Presence 96 24 Ways to Say the Heart is My Home 98 What If You Let Go of Every ‘Should’ 99 What is Better than a Guitar? 100 What the Hands Tell Me 103 Whatever Treasure is There 105 3 The Lauterstein-Conway Massage School and Clinic When Clients Disappear 106 When I Touch the Ribs 108 When You Hear Music 109 Where No Words Can Go 111 Who Took the First Breath? 112 Windows of Life 113 Wrestling with the Angel 115 You can’t work on the Same Person Twice 117 You Have the Touch 118 Zen of Breath 120 Addendum – “Energy and the Integrative Vision" 122 References 137 4 The Lauterstein-Conway Massage School and Clinic ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I want to thank my teachers: Keith Kartman, my first guitar teacher, Herbert Brün, my music composition teacher at University of Illinois, Paul Brown, psychotherapist and eventual consigliere, Bob King, my first massage teacher, and Dr. Fritz Smith, the founder of Zero Balancing, with whom I have studied for the past 35 years. I am grateful to the students, staff and teachers at The Lauterstein-Conway Massage School. I am grateful to my parents, Aubrey and Faye, and my Godmother, Millie Barry, all of whom instilled in me a connection and respect for deep learning and soul. I thank my family, Cherry, Katja, and Jake. And to my wife, Julie, most of all, who with her heart and her own art shows me every day how dedicated and creative one can be in this life. 5 Back to Table of Contents The Lauterstein-Conway Massage School and Clinic PREFACE “A symphony must be like the world – it must contain everything.” - Gustav Mahler Often you hear or read that massage is an art and a science. Massage schools curricula generally cover the science needed to knowledgably do massage. However, that massage is also essentially an art is something which the field has never clearly and fully articulated, tested for or taught. If a symphony must “contain everything”, how much more true is that for the compositions that are our sessions. Our medium - rather than just being notes – is the whole psychophysical human being. Just as music depends on the acoustical universe, we depend upon the wondrous structures and functions of anatomy and physiology. Music uses volume, quality of tone, accuracy of tuning and technique, notes’ duration, rhythm, and instrumentation. The science-based art of massage uses pressure, quality of touch, accuracy of knowledge and technique, strokes’ duration, rhythm, choice of instrument – thumb, palm, fingers - and the harmonious use of two hands, as in a Bach two-part invention for piano. “The human hand, acting in concert with the heart, mind and spirit, is arguably the most sophisticated tool in the known physical 6 Back to Table of Contents The Lauterstein-Conway Massage School and Clinic universe. With its pressure and warmth, guided by intelligence, care and inspiration, we can work with muscles and fascia, literally remodeling the human form and dramatically altering each and every human function.” -- The Deep Massage Book Our manual art is applied to the unique themes and variations that constitute every human being. While the overall themes of human life are common – musculo-skeletal structure, cerebral organization of sensation, movement, emotion, and thought – the individual variations are infinite. Each person is a unique symphony of being. When we take a history, we hear a symphony. The Art of Change The great movement teacher, Moshe Feldenkrais, said, “A person can not change unless they have a new experience.” Of all forms of healthcare, massage therapy is the most direct form of new experience – since it takes place in the conscious body. Because of its directness, the new experiences evoked by massage, give clients great opportunities, perhaps the greatest existential leverage they can have. Therapists help people step out of the field of repeated predictable experience into a new world. To paraphrase the philosopher, Gaston Bachelard, “One would say that touch, in its newness, opens a future to experience.” 7 Back to Table of Contents The Lauterstein-Conway Massage School and Clinic What is astonishing is how often clients come to us having completely forgotten or never having known what miracles they are anatomically, physiologically, and psychologically. They have often lost the sense that it is an incredible gift to be alive. The Role of Beauty, Goodness and Truth So when giving a massage, the therapist has the responsibility to help reawaken the person to their living beauty; to help them to feel the presence of goodness; and to help them recognize important inner truths. We respond to the client’s accumulations of past stresses and to their uniquely developed virtues. We work attentively in the present, the only time in which we act. And we facilitate a better future by helping them remember and mobilize the incredible capacities they have in body, mind and spirit. Restoring the important inner knowing - that each being is a miracle - is not hard! All we need do is ourselves work with respect and wonder and the knowledge of anatomy to reawaken the person to the marvel that he or she is! In touch, wonder is coupled with joy. Simply touching with clarity, we restore the person to the experience of who they most deeply are. As the writer Jacques Riviere said, “This is indeed that unknown person I was – and so close to me!” So often people are pre-occupied with outer beauty and appearances. But without the experience of inner beauty, of the beauty of life 8 Back to Table of Contents The Lauterstein-Conway Massage School and Clinic radiating from within, appearance means little. A good therapist will restore the person’s being in touch with being beautiful inside. What ‘divine’ creations we are! In the Bible it says that the human is created in the image of God. This has to be more than just a figure of speech! Leonardo took it seriously, so did Michelangelo – so should we! “I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.” - Michelangelo We need to recognize and cultivate the wonderful role goodness plays in our work. The direct application of kindness is the essence of massage therapy. Whereas the application of paint to canvas, or pen to paper can have a loving quality – the application of touch to the living body and mind of the client calls upon a kind of kindness that itself we know to be healing. As therapists we get to do good. We get to put our clients in touch with the beauty that lives within them. We help them to experience more deeply the truth of their aliveness. Each person is a walking miracle. Each person is a masterpiece. As Dante said, “Nature is the art of God.” If that is true, then each person is part of this divine art made from life. Tips for Therapists • Get Feedback – unlike paints and notes, our medium is intelligent 9 Back to Table of Contents The Lauterstein-Conway Massage School and Clinic and can tell us if our work is inspiring them! Brilliantly eliciting and responding to feedback can almost guarantee that you can optimize the experience in every single session.